Cider Hill

Winner of The BlueScope Steel Glenn Murcutt Student Prize

research in CIDER HILL is a proposition within the green belt of Victoria that deals with climatic issues of agricultural production, land productivity and perseveration of amenity due to a growing population density within Melbourne’s Urban Sprawl. Located in the rural context of the Yarra Valley a speculative orchard and new faculty for RMIT – the School of New Horticulture – is set up with a density of program; production, research and education that investigate new ways of cultivating the precious landscapes adjacent to the city. The project strongly engages in education about the cultivation of land through architectural explorations of topography and building form. Whilst maintaining the integrity of the existing site a language of carving and embedment provides students and public an immersive and educational exploration of one of Victoria’s precious landscapes.

The University and research facilities explore pedagogy in a rural environment through satellite learning spaces and the engagement of learning environments with cultivated fields. Roof top gardens provide informal learning spaces and transform the building into a growing medium using the earth as an insulator creating protected climate controlled rooms below. Laboratories open directly onto fields allowing students to undertake practical work from field to the applied research of material within laboratories. The configuration of trees and their alignments with the building allow innovative testing of cross pollination and responds to the constant shifts in climate. Submergence of the main thoroughfare into crest of the hill provides locations for earth core and below ground studies of root structures including access to an underground seed bank, which are engaged by students and public. The importance of water is signified by a water tower powered by an internalized wind turbine that is used to irrigate the site.

The project has the potential to support future campus locations where production, research and education focus on cultivation within its immediate agricultural context maintaining the amenity and culture of the Australian landscape.